Рождение царя и благословение пророка: источники миниатюр русских списков Сербской Александрии

The article presents preliminary findings of studies on the cycles of miniatures of Russian illuminated manuscripts of the Serbian Alexander Romance. It can be stated with a reasonable degree of certainty that the existing manuscripts originate from several different illuminated archetypes. Their illustrations were created without reference to the developed iconographies of the earlier versions of the Alexander Romance. However, they have connections with general compositions of Biblical scenes and iconographies of Biblical characters that are characteristic of Christian art. The artists responsible for the Old Rus illuminated protographs of known codices were careful enough in following the illustrated text, which is evident when comparing them with South Slavonic manuscript copies. At the same time, it became apparent that Russian miniaturists were preoccupied with subjects, connected with the role of Alexander the Great figure and his tsardom in the Providential Christian history. It is our perspective that this focus can be attributed to the exceptional significance of the Serbian version of the Romance, whose protagonist personifies the image of the ideal ruler, for the Russian culture during the epoch of the Moscow Great Principality and the formation of the tsardom. The research is supported by the Russian Science Foundation project Nr. 21-78-00050.